Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the reaction of pro-abortion activists to news about the Supreme Court:

Pro-abortion activists are in a state of hysteria. They are still reeling from the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court defending the right of crisis pregnancy centers to operate unimpeded by the politics of their adversaries. Then they got hit with a double whammy when news broke that Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring, thus giving President Trump the right to choose a pro-life replacement.

The New York Daily News ran a front-page story screaming, “We Are F*#%’D.” Amanda Marcotte, writing for Salon, set off the alarms by predicting Trump will pick a “right-wing hack who [will] take a hatchet to all manner of human rights and social justice.” Cher, the aging singer, went bonkers, warning that the “Supreme Court will take away our rights!!”

Senator Elizabeth Warren bellowed that Justice Kennedy’s retirement means that “women’s health, equal marriage, and civil rights are all at risk.” Jay Michaelson at the Daily Beast went off the rails saying, “The judicial apocalypse is here, and there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop it.”

Molly Redden almost had a nervous breakdown, telling Huffington Post readers of a woman who is preparing for the worst, saying, “We’d use a coat hanger, like our grandmothers did.” Daily Beast writer Erin Gloria Ryan sounded like she is one step removed from the asylum, opining, “Motherhood, in the eyes of the American right, is a blessed consequence of a sinful act of pleasure-seeking (or love).”

Whoopi Goldberg is so far gone that no asylum would admit her. She has a message for pro-lifers: “Get Out of My Vagina.” She speaks with authority. Goldberg had her first abortion at age 14, having six or seven by the age of 25. Six or seven. It’s time she gave us the right figure.

Los Angeles Times contributor Robin Abcarian noted that at least her state is doing things right. “Abortion-friendly California has the lowest maternity mortality rate in the country. And there is a reason for that: California values the lives and autonomy of women.”

Too bad California doesn’t value the lives and autonomy of children. It has over 500 abortion-providing facilities. Moreover, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, as of May 1, 2018, “California does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions—such as waiting periods, mandated parental involvement or limitations on publicly funded abortions—often found in other states.”

Only those who harbor a death wish for innocent children would find solace in this sad reality.

Kudos to President Trump for selecting Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court. We look forward to his next sterling appointment.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on how the media are covering Catholicism:

Last week, Pope Francis commented on problems at the U.S. border. “During the Obama years I celebrated Mass at Ciudad Juárez, while on the other side of the border 50 bishops concelebrated, and in the stadium there were many people. The problem already existed there. It’s not just an issue with Trump, but goes back to prior governments.”

Why wasn’t this headline news? If the pope had unfavorably compared President Trump to President Obama it would have been. Thanks to Thomas D. Williams and Carl E. Olson, two astute Catholic journalists, we know about it.

Earlier last week, I pointed out that the pope made it clear that gay couples are not a family. “It is painful for me to say this today: People speak of varied families, of various kinds of family,” but “the family [as] man and woman in the image of God is the only one.”

Why wasn’t this headline news? The media clearly have no interest in informing the public of the pope’s traditional views on marriage and the family—that would interfere with their carefully contrived narrative of who he is.

So what made headline news this week? A priest from Kenya has been suspended for rapping during Mass. ABC, BBC, CNN, Fox News, Newsweek, and other outlets covered this story (in fairness to CNN, it also carried the story on the pope and gay couples).

The rapping priest story, whatever one thinks about the suspension, is purely an internal Church issue, having no public role whatsoever. But when the head of the Church addresses how the president and his predecessor have dealt with the issue of immigration, that is a very public issue. Ditto for when the pope says something controversial about gays and the family.

All of this is deliberate. The media barons inflate and deflate issues that reflect their ideological predilections. That they don’t see this as a problem is the most disturbing aspect of it all.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on remarks made yesterday by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is accusing some of her colleagues of duplicity. She called them out for saying religious hostility was in play against the baker in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, but no such bias was evident in the travel ban case. She is right about one thing: duplicity is at work. But it is not her associates who are guilty—she is.

The travel ban case was decided on the constitutional right of the chief executive to exercise his duties as commander-in-chief. Critical remarks about Muslim terrorists made by presidential-candidate Donald Trump were not found to be persuasive in overriding the right of the president to protect national security.

Sotomayor blasted the majority decision saying it was “motivated by hostility and animus toward the Muslim faith.” She did not explain why only some Muslim-run nations were singled out, nor did she explain why nations having nothing to do with Islam—Venezuela and North Korea—were included in the restriction. As the majority of the Justices found, religion was not what motivated the ban; rather, it was the terrorist threat that some nations posed to the U.S.

It is Sotomayor who is selectively interested in religious liberty, not her colleagues. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, where clearly anti-Christian comments were made by members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission against Christian baker Jack Phillips, Sotomayor found no religious hostility whatsoever.

Sotomayor joined a dissent decision by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying the baker case showed no “evidence [of] hostility to religion of the kind we have previously held to signal a free-exercise violation….”

So when one member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission says Christianity is comparable to slavery and the Holocaust, and another member says that no one has a right “to act on his religious beliefs if he wants to do business in this state,” these remarks, according to Sotomayor, were not “motivated by hostility and animus” toward Christianity.

Sotomayor has set two bars for determining religious hostility: the one for Christians reaches the sky; the one for Muslims is at ground level.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a U.S. Supreme Court decision reached today:

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a California law requiring crisis pregnancy centers to inform women about the availability of abortion and contraception was unconstitutional. The ruling was narrowly drawn and did not decide related issues.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas found the law to be an unconstitutional abridgment of the free speech rights of the crisis pregnancy centers. The law was not content neutral. Indeed, it was content based, meaning that it specifically targeted the speech of these abortion-alternative centers.

The majority noted that under the law, “licensed clinics must provide a government-drafted script about the availability of state-sponsored services….One of those services is abortion—the very practice that petitioners are devoted to opposing.” Thus, the ruling said, “the licensed notice plainly ‘alters the content’ of the petitioners’ speech.”

Importantly, the majority did not buy the spurious argument made by the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. That court ruled that the California law regulated “professional speech,” and not the kind of communicative speech that warrants strict scrutiny under the First Amendment. The Supremes weren’t buying it. “But this Court has not recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech.”

In a clear rebuke to the Ninth Circuit’s creative law-making, the majority said that “Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.’ This Court has ‘been reluctant to mark off new categories of speech for diminished constitutional protection.'”

The majority also ruled that while there was no “persuasive reason for treating professional speech as a unique category that is exempt from ordinary First Amendment principles,” it did not rule out the possibility that there may be some future reason to consider it. But the bar has been set high, thus making attempts to clear it exceedingly difficult.

The pro-abortion industry has been dealt an important setback. Those who believe in protecting the lives of the most innocent among us have won a significant victory. And those who are principled defenders of free speech also have reason to celebrate.

The June 27 Samantha Bee show was a rerun, with previously run commercials inserted, rendering our monitoring of Wonderful Pistachios temporarily moot. The next new show will be aired on July 18—and we will be watching to see whether Wonderful Pistachios at that time discontinues advertising on Samantha Bee.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the league’s latest move regarding Samantha Bee’s TBS show, “Full Frontal”:

Now that we have succeeded in getting Verizon, P&G, Wendy’s, and Ashley HomeStore to stop advertising on Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal,” next up is Wonderful Pistachios.

Wonderful Pistachios is the product of The Wonderful Company, a Los Angeles-based company that sells California pistachios all over the world; its reach is enormous. Given its high profile, it surely does not want to be tagged as supporting a show that denigrates women and Catholics.

The unforgiveable comment made by Bee about the president’s daughter—calling her a “c***”—still sticks in the mind of most Americans. That is why sponsors are fleeing her show left and right.

Wonderful Pistachios, with its familiar black packaging, is a great product. But there is nothing great about sponsoring a misogynist and an anti-Catholic bigot.

On June 22, we sent a letter in the overnight mail to Stewart Resnick, the head of The Wonderful Company; he should now be in possession of it. I asked him to pull ads for Wonderful Pistachios from Bee’s show.

Please be advised that the June 27 show is a repeat. However, each week new sponsors are sought, repeat or no. They will continue with repeats for a few weeks; the next new show is July 18.

Contact: Mark Carmel, director of corporate communications: Mark.Carmel@wonderful.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an editorial in today’s Washington Post:

The June 22 editorial in the Washington Post is a marvel. Writing about the accusation made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, it notes that the alleged offense took place almost 50 years ago. “That it took nearly a half-century for these allegations to be dealt with illustrates the church’s wretched track record in combating clerical sex abuse.”

The average reader will no doubt conclude that the Catholic Church sat on these allegations for five decades. But that is a lie. Worse, the Washington Post knows it is a lie. How do I know?

Two paragraphs after it makes this remark, the editorial notes that the allegations “became known to the church through its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program….” That is true. So when did the accuser come forward? In the early part of this year, after the New York Archdiocese essentially invited him to come forward. In April he testified before this panel.

Are they dunces at the Washington Post? Or just malicious?

To blame the Catholic Church for not acting on a complaint made in 2018 about an offense that occurred in 1971 is astounding. Is their animus against the Church that deep that they don’t even see their bias?

Contact Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor: Fred.Hiatt@washpost.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest development in the league’s battle with Samantha Bee:

Just a few hours ago, I issued a news release asking our supporters to email Ashley Furniture requesting that it pull its sponsorship of Samantha Bee’s TBS show, “Full Frontal.” We just received a statement from the company saying they were going to do just that.

“Thank you for bringing us your concerns about Ashley HomeStore’s advertisements which aired during ‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’ to our attention.

“The reprehensible comments made by Samantha Bee in no way represent the culture, beliefs, or core values of Ashley HomeStore.

“Ashley HomeStore has made the decision to discontinue advertising during this program.”

We congratulate Ashley HomeStore for its decision. We also congratulate all of those who contacted the store.

Please patronize Ashley HomeStore—they represent our values.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on advertisers for Samantha Bee’s TBS show, “Full Frontal”:

For the past week, the Catholic League has requested its supporters to contact Wendy’s, asking the company to stop advertising on Samantha Bee’s show, “Full Frontal.” We succeeded. Wendy’s, which advertised on her show of June 13, did not run an ad on her June 20 edition.

According to a news story in the June 19 edition of the Los Angeles Times, commercial time on Bee’s show is off 75% since the host used the “c-word” to describe the president’s daughter. As we pointed out this week, Bee’s relentless assault on Catholicism explains why we will not let go.

Last week, we reported that the two companies we had targeted the week before, Verizon and P&G, pulled their ads; they advertised on her June 6 show but not the week after (nor did they run an ad on her June 20 show).

Our work is not done. Bee picked up a new advertiser, Ashley Furniture. We are asking everyone who helped to get Verizon, P&G, and Wendy’s to drop her show now turn their attention to the home furnishing company.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the news that credible and substantiated accusations of sexual molestation have been made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, forcing him to resign from ministry:

A little over a year after assuming the reins of the Catholic League, I started exchanging letters with Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. He was genuinely supportive of our efforts. On October 17, 1994, he wrote to me saying, “I have been speaking to the bishops of New Jersey at our Provincial meeting and encouraging them to support the work of the Catholic League in their own dioceses.”

Now he is bearing a heavy cross. The takeaway for me is clear.

On June 12, I wrote the following: “The problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church occurred mostly between 1965 and 1985. Now that it is harder for practicing homosexuals to enter the priesthood—they are responsible for 8 in 10 cases of the sexual abuse of minors (pedophiles are responsible for less than 5 percent)—there is no need for the annual study [of clergy sexual abuse].”

I added that in the last two years, “an average of .005 percent of the clergy had a substantiated charge made against him.” I also credited the training programs and screening procedures instituted by the bishops, saying they should be continued.

How is this relevant to the situation that Cardinal McCarrick is in?

The three key points that I made are: the timeline (1965-1985); the sexual orientation of the molester (most were homosexuals); and the progress that has been made (practicing homosexuals have a harder time becoming priests and efforts to check this problem have worked).

In the case of Cardinal McCarrick, the alleged abuse took place a half century ago (in the 1970s), and the alleged victim was a teenager, thus ruling out pedophilia.

Pray for Cardinal McCarrick and anyone whom he may have hurt.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the TBS show, “Full Frontal,” starring Samantha Bee:

We were happy to note last week that Verizon and P&G did not advertise on Samantha Bee’s show of June 13; this followed a week of protest by Catholic League supporters. We were not happy to note that Wendy’s ran a spot that night. Accordingly, we asked our allies to contact the family-friendly company, and they did so in droves. Let’s see if Wendy’s advertises on her June 20 show.

Bee is in trouble largely because of her obscene attack on the president’s daughter. But her vile antics extend way beyond that one inexcusable show. For example, Bee has a history of attacking the Catholic Church, and indeed she did so again last week.

The June 13 edition of “Full Frontal” included a segment on the abortion referendum in Ireland. Instead of reporting on both sides, the correspondent lied about the Catholic Church. She said that the “Magdalene Laundries” were “prison-like” facilities for wayward women where “children were often forcibly taken from them.” Film clips from the movie “Philomena” were shown.

As I have shown, neither of these accusations are true. They are pure propaganda. Moreover, “Philomena,” as I have recounted, was itself the product of deceit and out-and-out lies. No matter, this issue has nothing to do with the referendum—it was simply an opportunity to bash the Church again.

They even dragged out Colm O’Gorman to take cheap shots at the Church; he is the executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland. What viewers weren’t told is that he is also a pro-abortion extremist whose hatred of the Church once propelled him to sue Pope John Paul II on wholly false grounds. Obviously, his effort got nowhere.

This is vintage Samantha Bee. She verbally assaults innocent persons, smears the Catholic Church, and hires like-minded staff to promote her hateful agenda. Her appeal may be limited to the morally challenged, but that is still too many.

Wendy’s is too good a company to be associated with this show. Many other big name sponsors have pulled their ads. So should Wendy’s.

Contact: Tammie.Morgan@Wendys.com